Vacuum collators are known. In such a device, low-pressure pipes, known as pullers or suckers are used to pick up a single article from a supply stack and transfer the article to a conveyor. Such a device is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,019,012 to Sanford.
In many prior art devices, wear particles tend to soil cards before use. Sometimes this problem arises from conveyors, moving cards to a stack.
An object of the present invention was to devise a multi-bin sorter for flexible cards which would keep cards clean and at the same time be simple to make and use.